Seraphim (12 page)

Then the dream resumed.

15.

Rachel stared at the photograph while pensively twirling a finger through her wet hair. She and Juanita had gotten drenched in the short distance between the driveway and the front door, having been unable to go through the garage because the opener in Juanita’s car was on the fritz.

As she studied the picture, Duncan thought her poise was laudable.

Of the two windows in the room, the one closest to them faced west, confronting the storm. Lightning flickered habitually across the glass, as if the window sat in the periphery of a welder’s arc.

Thunder reverberated throughout the house, reminding Duncan of the earthquake they’d all sat through just a few days earlier. A minor one, five-point-two on the ol’ Richter scale.

Now, deep in his heart, he could feel the rumblings of another; this one powerful enough to split continents.

“She’s a dead-ringer,” she finally said. “I mean ...wow.”

Duncan leaned forward in his chair. “When and where did you get that picture?”

“Well,” Rachel said, “I’ve been putting dates and events together since remembering the photograph earlier today, and I believe...”

“Yes?”

She straightened in her chair. “Do you recall when we first found out we were pregnant?”

Although quite sure only one of them had been with embryo, Duncan nodded.

“Right before we left Rock Bay, to come here?”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” he insisted.

“Well, I was in town one day and ran across this picture. Actually, it was right before we left for LA. Anyway, this picture kind of grabbed me from the start. I felt…compelled. I mean, I had to have it. The guy behind the counter thought I was crazy. He didn’t want to sell it to me at first, but I put on the waterworks, probably said something like they were long lost relatives, and he finally gave in.”

“What
compelled
you?” Duncan said, then wondered if he might have sounded a bit too suspicious.

“I…I don’t know. I do remember that I almost fainted at one point.” She looked up at him, bemused. “And that I saw an angel.”

“I’m sorry, did you say an
angel
?”

“Funny, huh?” she said, looking down at the picture again. “God, she really does look like Amy.”

“That
is
Amy. Has to be,” Duncan said, still not really believing it but wanting to solicit a reaction from Rachel.

She considered him carefully. “That’s not possible, Dunc. I bought this—”

“Over eleven years ago,” he finished for her. “But
why
? What on earth would force you to buy this photograph? And why have you kept it hidden from me all these years?” His tone was sharp now; accusatorial. “Are you keeping something from me, Rachel?” The question crashed in his chest, hurling sharp, icy debris into his heart. He was now convinced that Rachel was just as mystified by the picture, at least by the image of Amy, and that if anyone was keeping secrets, it was him.

What a miserable hypocrite,
he thought.

“I wasn’t intentionally keeping it from you,” she snapped, meeting his hostility. “I simply tucked it away because later I felt foolish for buying it. I did run across it five or six years ago while going through some old stuff, but it didn’t leave any particular impression because Amy was still too young, I suppose, for the resemblance to strike me. I boxed it up with a bunch of other odds and ends and once again forgot about it.”

“Okay,” Duncan said, tempering his voice. “If it means nothing to you—if it was simply a compulsive, spur-of-the-moment thing way back when—then why didn’t you just throw it out when you came across it again those five or six years ago?”

This time, she considered him suspiciously. “Why the third degree, Dunc?”

He leaned back in his chair. “I just—I just want to know why this picture is so important to you,” he entreated, “and why you just happened to remember it today.”

With some diffidence, Rachel related the conversation she’d had earlier with the paramedic.

Nervously, Duncan laughed. “What a load of horseshit.”

“He was telling the truth,” she insisted.

Before Duncan could rebut, Juanita crept through the doorway carrying cream, sugar, and three cups of steaming coffee on a circular tray. It was obvious to Duncan that she’d not even toweled herself dry, given the shiny black octopus squatting on her head.

The china clinked dangerously together as she abruptly paused. “Excuse, Mrs. McNeil, but should I come back—”

“No, Juanita,” Rachel said. “Please, come in.”

Juanita set the tray down on the edge of Duncan’s desk and began putting the customary amounts of sugar and cream into Rachel’s coffee. Duncan preferred his black, though he was sure that if rat poison were an available condiment, Juanita would have added enough lumps to guarantee convulsions, then coma, after the second sip.

“This picture,” Juanita said. “It is the cause of your argument?”

Rachel held the picture up for Juanita to see.

“It is Amy,” Juanita said confidently, “but I do not recognize the woman next to her.”

“Neither do I,” Rachel said. “And that’s
not
Amy.”

Juanita stared down at Rachel as if she’d just confessed to having opened the city’s first free abortion clinic. “Pardon me, Mrs. McNeil, but I know my Amy, and that girl is her.”

“If I didn’t know where it came from, and how old it is,” Rachel said, “then I would have to agree with you.”

“This picture is not new?” Juanita said, exasperation in her eyes.

“Rachel found it before Amy was ever born,” Duncan said. “Back in Massachusetts.”

Juanita crossed herself, mumbled a short prayer. “God help us, she has a doppelganger.”

“Apparently,” Rachel agreed.

Duncan knew what a doppelganger was, but was surprised as hell to hear such a word come from Juanita’s mouth. In fact, it even seemed a bit too exotic for Rachel’s vocabulary.

“
Did have
a double,” he reminded them. “Their likenesses would have to be contemporaneous to qualify that noun. Besides, you both watch too much daytime TV.”

“Alright, Professor McNeil, then you explain the uncanny resemblance,” Rachel said. “In fact, why don’t you just neatly square the whole thing away for us right now.”

Duncan sighed. “I can’t. At least not...”

“At least not
what
?” Rachel said, her eyes narrowing.

As the land masses of his life began to buckle and grind, he averted his eyes.

“Spit it out, Dunc,” Rachel insisted. “You’re not the only one around here who can read people like a book, you know.”

He still couldn’t look at her, but could feel her eyes drilling into the top of his skull as he stared into his lap.

Did he dare tell her?

“Fess up,” she urged. There was already a shaky quality in her voice, as if she were prodding a hesitant doctor to reveal the results of her mammogram. “Now!”

He finally looked up at Juanita. “Would you excuse us?”

Juanita glanced expectantly at Rachel, as if she might invalidate Duncan’s order. She didn’t, though, and a few moments later Rachel and Duncan were alone.

“Well?”

“You’re not going to like me very much,” Duncan promised.

Sighing, Rachel nodded her understanding. “Alright, who’s the woman?”

16.

Amy was back, standing on the edge of the cliff, but was now observing rather than experiencing the same dream she’d had earlier. And this time from a different perspective. She was watching it unfold in the window directly before her, as if the pane of glass had turned into a kind of television screen, one capable of three-dimensional imagery.

She did not have the wide panoramic view of the cliffs that she’d had previously, but was now standing on their very edge, if she was to trust her eyes. She felt that if she were to step forward, up and over the window sill, she would surely fall the hundreds of feet down to the tranquil ocean below.

She could still hear the rain outside pecking against the glass, but could no longer see it. Unlike her emotional state in the previous dream, she was frightened.

Shakily leaning forward, she peered down, and was instantly overcome with that woozy, wavering feeling that she got when riding in elevators.

As hard as she tried, she could not remove her hand from the window. It was the weirdest feeling. Her sense of touch told her this was a solid object; smooth glass. But her eyes and stomach were telling her something entirely different.

Her name was Amy McNeil, not Katherine, and she was sure this was not a dream.

Then, just as before, the multi-winged image appeared, reflected on the mirror-like surface of the water below. Small at first, it quickly grew in size as it descended from the sky.

She looked up, and again the sounds of many approaching trains filled the air, rapidly becoming a deafening blare.

The immense shape plummeted directly in front of her, and for more than a second blocked out her view entirely. A blinding flash of light and hot gust of wind rushed instantly through the window, the concussive force literally blowing her off her feet. Had her right hand not been so bizarrely anchored to the glass, she believed she would have been thrown clear across the room.

At once her lips became chapped, her mouth and eyes sucked of moisture. Her hair whipped crazily about her face.

She cried out.

Then a thunderous, crashing noise erupted from the water below. She looked down. The multi-winged creature had plunged into the water—which wasn’t water anymore, but glass. A volcanic eruption of glittering fragments, like the silvery pieces of a mirror, sprayed into the air.

Seconds later, a conglomeration of remnants sailed past her, heaven-bound. She saw that each one was an individual segment of either body or wing, exquisitely detailed, capturing every aspect and minuscule feature of scale and feather as if cast from the most delicate of molds. She even saw, in some of the closer ones, portions of her own astonished reflection.

The soaring fragments did not dive back to earth, as she’d expected. Instead, the pieces kept soaring upward, twinkled like stars for a moment, then vanished altogether.

Glancing back down at the ocean, she saw that there was now a gigantic, craggy hole where the impact had occurred. And she instantly knew with all of her soul that within the infinite blackness beneath…there waited monsters.

Monsters preparing for a feast of man.

Then the vision became a rain-splattered window again, so suddenly that it jarred her backward. No longer stuck to the glass, she fell butt-first to the hard floor.

Dazed, she glanced around the shadowy room. Very near her, something twinkled on the floor.

In the hallway outside, there was a scramble of soft footsteps. Careful not to cut herself, she snatched the piece of glass, then hurried to the open bed.

The door opened just as she slipped beneath the covers.

Two nurses scrambled in.

“What’s goin’ on in here?” one of the nurses said, looking around the room, appearing surprised that it wasn’t in shambles. “And just how, mind you tellin’ me, did you disconnect yourself from your IV and cardiac monitor without Houston gettin’ wind of the problem?”

Amy pulled the sheets up to her chin, swallowing hard. “I don’t know. Guess I was just having a nightmare.”

“Nightmare?” said the other nurse. “Mercy! It sounded like King Kong was throwing a tantrum in here!”

17.

As Deacon Samuel Flannery walked down the central aisle of St. Patrick’s Church, ready to call it a day, he paid his usual reverence to the nine swirling angels gracing its domed ceiling. He paused, then slowly began turning in a tight circle as he gazed upward, entwined with the angels’ spiraling, heavenly ascension. Then he stopped, his thick, black eyebrows dipping prominently between his puzzled eyes.

Father Kagan emerged from the sacristy. No longer draped in the silky vestments he’d worn at mass, he was now down to his black Rabat, black slacks, and clerical shirt with its white Roman collar.

He was whistling.

Samuel turned as Eli approached him. “Ah, Father Kagan. You seem to be feeling much better,” he said, referring to Eli’s earlier, weary state at mass.

“Yes, much so, thank you,” Eli said. “Admiring my work, I see.”

“God has truly gifted you, Father,” Samuel agreed. “An inspirational masterpiece. By far the most adored this side of Pompey. But, I must say, I’m a bit stumped.”

“Oh?” Eli said. “And why is that?”

“Well,” Flannery said, again gazing upward, “you see the largest angel there? The, um...”

“Seraph,” Eli said, not bothering to look up.

“Seraph, yes. Well, I’ve studied your exquisite mural many times, Father, have indulged in its holy meaning, but I must say…I don’t recall that particular angel wielding a
sword
.”

This time Eli looked up.

In the seraph’s right hand was, indeed, a great sword, poised as if ready to deliver a lashing blow.

After an uncomfortable moment, Eli smiled. “Your faculties are failing you, Samuel. The sword has always been there. And a nice touch, if you ask me.”

Samuel leered at Eli. “Are you sure, Father?”

“I painted it, didn’t I?”

“Of course, of course, but I...”

“Perhaps you partook of too much wine at sacrament this evening?” Eli winked, chuckling.

“Never,” Samuel vowed with a wave of his hand.

Eli slapped him on the back, laughed. “Go get a good night’s rest. It’s good for the soul. And the
eyes
.”

Samuel sighed, reluctant to give in. “Maybe you’re right. I’m not a young man anymore, Father.”

“Neither of us are,” Eli agreed.

“By the way,” Samuel said, “how old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Not at all,” Eli smiled. “I’m fifty-two, and feel better than I ever have,” he said, punctuating the declaration with two hard slaps to his flat stomach.

“Yes, yes, you’re a fit man, Father, and hide your age well,” Samuel agreed. “But—and also something I’ve apparently overlooked—the gray at your temples,” he observed. “It seems to me that just this previous Sunday your hair was free of such maturity.”